The Invisible Library (The Invisible Library #1)(31)

Irene looked at him, the case in her hands, and raised her eyebrows pointedly. ‘Yes. I do really mean just sleep.’

‘But you, me – we’re sharing rather a small space, don’t you think?’ He stretched, and she noticed his trousers clung appealingly tightly. ‘You’re not feeling some kind of loco parentis responsibility towards a novice, are you? Is that what it is?’

‘No,’ Irene said briefly. ‘But it’s irrelevant in any case.’

‘But . . .’

‘Look,’ she cut him off, before he got any ideas about standing up and taking her in his arms or anything like that. ‘Kai, I like you, you’re extremely handsome, and I hope we’ll stay good friends, but you are not my type.’

‘Oh,’ he said.

She walked back, sat down, and opened the case, starting to thumb through the papers inside.

‘What is your type?’ Kai asked hopefully.

Irene looked up to see that he’d removed his cravat, unbuttoned his shirt, and was showing a triangle of muscular, smooth, pale chest. She could imagine what he would feel like under her fingers.

She swallowed. ‘Do we really have to do this?’

‘I’m not just trying to flatter you,’ Kai said. There was a thread of annoyance in his voice now. ‘But I like you, I think you’re clever and witty and charming and I have a lot of respect for you. And believe me when I say I am marvellous in bed.’

‘I do believe you,’ Irene said, looking for a way out of this. ‘I’m sure that we would spend a very nice evening. But I wouldn’t get any study done then.’

‘After the study,’ Kai said hopefully.

Irene rubbed her forehead with the back of one hand. She was getting a headache. ‘Look, I appreciate you being polite about this, I appreciate you being absolutely charming, and I wish I could be more polite about turning you down. But it’s been a long day, and I still have work to do, and you’re not really my type. And before this goes any further, my type is darkly dangerous and fascinating, of dubious morality. And yes, this caused the whole problem in the cat burglar scandal that was mentioned earlier. Which was deeply embarrassing at the time. And still is. Also, let me make myself perfectly clear that if you repeat this I will skin you alive. Right?’

Kai looked at her with big disappointed eyes. ‘I would have enjoyed partnering you,’ he said. ‘Really. You would, too.’

‘Allow me to inform you that I am an exquisite bed partner,’ Irene said, a little sniffily. ‘I have travelled through hundreds of alternates and sampled partners from many different cultures. If I took you to bed, you certainly wouldn’t be complaining.’

Kai gave her another deep stare from those drowning-dark eyes of his.

She sighed. ‘But right now, we have a book to find, I have to study, and you need to sleep. Please?’

Eventually he did, and she could work in peace, with only the occasional side-thought about tempting offers and beautifully contoured muscles.

A couple of hours later, with Kai soundly asleep, Irene put down her papers and rubbed her sore temples. She’d just memorized a dozen different adverbs for the way that an airship moved, and fifteen adjectives for types of smog. She was due a break.

Unfortunately, thought came along with it.

Alberich was known to be allied with some of the Fae; he’d gone to them when he first went renegade. Now he allegedly played on their various factions with the energy of a lunatic musician with a pipe organ. The few fragmented reports that the Library had on him – at least those that were accessible to juniors like herself – suggested that he was after immortality.

She stared at the papers without really seeing them. Immortality. The Library gave an effective sort of immortality, or at least a continued life until the person involved grew tired of it. As long as a Library initiate bearing its mark was inside the Library, they didn’t age. Out in the multiple worlds, one grew old, but inside the Library ageing just stopped. She’d spent years in the Library herself while she was training. She’d had years of experience that didn’t show anywhere obvious. Except perhaps her eyes sometimes, but she tried not to think about that.

That was why the Library hierarchy functioned as it did. Junior Librarians operated out in the divergent worlds while they still had the years to spare. Once they grew old, they retreated to work in the Library for as long as they chose, with only the occasional trip outside if necessary. These were people like Coppelia and Kostchei, spending their days in the endless rooms, finally able to get their research done properly. Some Librarians just lived on and on, until they decided that they’d had enough, or went out into the alternate worlds to finish their days somewhere that they liked. The Library paid for it, however expensive or exotic, on the grounds that ‘nothing is too good for those who’ve spent their lives in service to the Library’. Of course, it was similarly aged Librarians who voted for the funding on that sort of thing . . .

Irene wasn’t going to start thinking about that sort of thing yet. She had years in the field ahead of her yet. Decades. Things to do. People to see.

But then there was Alberich. He’d left the Library five hundred years ago. There was no way that he could still be alive by the Library’s normal methods. He must have made some sort of bargain with the Fae, creatures defined by their impossibility. Common horror or fantasy literature supplied half a dozen unpleasant ideas on how Alberich could still exist, though some of them might not count as living.